This invention relates to an improvement in telephone communications control systems.
Many organizations gather and distribute information in the course of telephone calls serviced at least in part by members of a staff of attendants or agents. Such organizations include major corporations which conduct television or other media advertising campaigns to encourage customers and potential customers to call the organization via a telephone number that is toll-free to the caller. The area code "800" is used in the United States for such toll-free telephone numbers.
Other such organizations include non-commercial public broadcasting stations which solicit contributions from the viewing public to defray the cost of providing the broadcast services. Typically, such stations receive volunteer help from a large group of people who serve as an attendant staff to service incoming calls.
As to commercial television stations, they often broadcast telethons to raise money for charity and likewise need a large group of people to service incoming calls. Religious and other non-commercial organizations also use telecasts to encourage viewers to call the organization to receive pamphlets and other materials of interest.
In each of the above-described situations, there is a need to provide, in a systematic and orderly way, for prompt and efficient servicing of the calls.
Providing attendant service for multiple incoming calls at the same time requires multiple incoming lines. Unless a sufficient number of incoming lines are provided to meet the needs of peak volume traffic, incoming callers will have to wait for service, and the longer the wait, the higher the percentage of callers who will hang up before receiving service. A tariff charge must be paid by the subscriber for every incoming line. Further, if the incoming line is one which provides for toll-free dialing, the subscriber must pay usage charges for the line. Thus, a substantial expense can be incurred in subscribing to and using many lines.
The system described in prior application No. 07/249,220 provides numerous advantages in its ability to route incoming calls onto an outgoing line on the public switched network to attendants, who can be working at a remote location such as a regional call center or home. A network of attendants is established to which many calls could be quickly routed without having the remote attendants hang up between calls, thus minimizing call routing time. Keeping the remote attendants on-line is well suited to those periods of time when the incoming call traffic pattern is at a high level of activity, especially when the incoming lines are saturated with calls.
The technique of keeping an attendant on-line to the network and extending a series, sequence or stream of calls to an attendant without the need for an attendant to hang up between calls can be referred to by one of any number of phrases. This technique is referred to as "Call Streaming" within this application.
The afore-referenced system was also operable in a traffic-dependent mode where the attendants were not connected to the system until the detection of an incoming call. The incoming call would trigger the system to call a scheduled attendant. Thus, it would take longer to connect a caller to an attendant than in the instance when the attendant was already on-line, but this method was particularly cost-effective when the incoming call traffic pattern was very sporadic or even random.
The afore mentioned system has numerous advantages, but further improvements in its operation can yet be made.
It is desirable to minimize the usage of the outgoing line to the remote attendant when the number of incoming calls is low, and thus the line charges; but to maintain the advantages of quick call routing when the number of incoming calls is very high.
It is also desirable to incorporate additional automated network management capability within such a system, such as automatically adapting the network to intermediate or varying levels of incoming call traffic.